Wool card rub apron



Aug. 29, 1950 H. M. BACON I 2,520,192

WOOL CARD RUB APRON Fi led Aug. 3, 1944 l9 INVENTOR HENRY M. BACON BY W ATTORN EYJ Patented Aug. 29, 1950 WOOL CARD RUB APR-ON Henry M. Bacon, Dayton, Ohio, assignor to The Dayton Rubber Company, a corporation of Ohio Application August 3, 1944, Serial No."547,907

9 Claims.

This invention relates to aprons for textile time before the spinning operation proper. They are'endless belts which are driven by a pair of rollers.

For a long time leather was the only material found suitable for such aprons. However, there were several drawbacks connected with their use. Leather aprons are of relatively uneven thickness, and thus the yarn produced with them has a very un-uniform cross-section. The gripping power of leather is relatively low, and special surface designs have to be provided in order to increase the friction. Leather aprons also dry out easily and therefore lose their flexibility. Oiling is the only remedy for this, but oiled aprons, are liable to cause soiling of the thread. Leather also absorbs colors and dyes readily, a fact which is very disadvantageous in the case of frequent changes between yarns of different colors, particularly when light colored or white yarns are treated after some darker colored ma terial. In such instances light colored materials are soiled by colors which the apron had absorbed from the thread of the previous batch. Furthermore, leather aprons are liable to become charged with static electricity, particularly in the beginning of their use, which necessitates their treatment with water at intervals. Furthermore, leather aprons vary a great deal as to their degree of expansibility and therefore are hard to adjust. In order to overcome this latter disadvantage, it has been necessary to attachbuttons on the inner surface of the leather apron near the outer edge, which extends beyond the shoulders of the rollers.

One of the advantages of leather aprons is their great strength, which is especially valuable if buttons as described above are fastened on the aprons. The high tensile strength and durability of leather prohibits a premature wearing out of the apron by the rivets or other fastening means for the buttons. Another very desirable property of leather for aprons is its high degree of flexibility and thus adjustability to the shape of the rollers, even on the'edges which extend beyond the shoulders of the rollers. Abrasive wear at the side of the apron is thus reduced to a minimum.

Later on, rub aprons were made of synthetic materials such as synthetic rubbers. These aprons of synthetic materials were free from some of the disadvantages which are encountered in leather aprons. There still were found a number of undesirable properties in the use of rubber aprons. Rubber aprons have to be built up on a fabric-containing base in order to reduce their elasticity. This fabric base, however, does not give the aprons sufficient grip, so that such aprons are liable to travel on the rollers. For this reason, retaining buttons have tobe applied on the roller-contacting surface of the aprons. These buttons however, exert a high strain on the fabric base of the apron and very frequently tear off the fabric base so that the buttons become loose after a short while and not infrequently are lost during operation. For this reason it has been tried to use'a more resistant and stronger base for suchaprons of rubber or other synthetics, but such aprons have been found unsatisfactory, also because their flexibility, one of their most important properties was greatly impaired by the sti'ffn'ess'of the fabric. If the flexibility is not sufficient, the contact and gripwith the rollers is incomplete; besides, the ends of the aprons, which extend beyond and are not supported by the shoulders of the rollers, have a tendency to return to a round shape, and this causes an excessive degree of pressure and consequently excessive wear.

According to the present invention, an apron is produced which is free from all of the drawbacks which have been mentioned above and which is characterized by good gripping action, a high degree of flexibility and at the same time by high tensile strength and long service life.

The invention will be more clearly understood from the following description taken in connection with the annexed drawings, in which:

Fig. l is a perspective view of an apron according to the invention mounted on the rollers;

Fig. 2-is'a fragmentary longitudinal section of the apron on an enlarged scale, taken along the line 2'-2 ofFigl; Fig.3 is a sectional View taken along the line 3+3 of Fig. 2; and

. Fig. 4-is a fragmentary longitudinal section of a modified embodiment of this invention.

Referring more particularly to the drawings, If! designates an apron mounted on a pair of rollers Band 13. The apron is formed of a fabric base l4 which, in the case of the drawing, consists of three layers of a relatively flexible fabric material. Over the base layers of the apron, the

body portion l5, consisting of a synthetic rubber composition, is applied. This body portion fi is REFERENCES CITED The following references are of record in the file of this patent:

UNITED STATES PATENTS Number Name Date 1,44 ,767 Hunter et a1 Jan, 16, 1923 1,461,527 Hunter et a1 July 10, 1923 10 1,890,080 Freedlander Dec. 6,1932 2,233,985 Knowland et a1. Mar. 4, 1941 

